This site is one of a dozen interrelated blogs. Each emphasizes its own theme or category portal. At the center sits the DIDACHE Gospel. The word ‘DIDACHE’ (Greek for ‘teaching’) is short for an ancient Christian text fully titled: ‘The Teaching of the Lord, by the Twelve Apostles, to Gentiles.‘

Long ago, this DIDACHE almost certainly represented no less than the authentic founding charter of the Church. As the title states, it was written by or attributed to “the Twelve.”

After being revered and obeyed in the earliest churches, at a point during the mid-to-late 300s it was intentionally forsaken. This decision coincided with the timeframe of the early councils, a few generations after Roman Emperor Constantine converted to the faith and made Christianity the imperial religion. This time became and epochal turning-point. If the DIDACHE is authentically apostolic, then the apparent implication would that the Councils radically altered the Lord’s original teaching (or ‘DIDACHE’). And, in its stead, they created Roman Catholicism.

For about the next 1,400 years the DIDACHE naturally fell into rapid disuse and was eventually lost entirely, although strong traces and derivative adulterated forms of it flourished.

Then at last as if miraculously the DIDACHE was re-discovered. In 1873, an archbishop (Metropolitan) of the Greek Orthodox Church found one well-preserved, 900-year-old copy of it amidst a collection of apparently Patristic texts, in a library at Constantinople. Several other fragments and copies have turned up elsewhere, mainly in Egypt, since then.

Immediately on its translation into modern languages, the DIDACHE, and its authenticity and many ramifications, have been topics of great scholarly interest. At the time, the general excitement it generated has been compared to that stirred by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll. Now, with the passage of over a century of scholarship and analysis, a great deal of information about the DIDACHE is now accumulated, and, commencing June 2008, highlights of this data will be posted at my Didache Gospel blog.

“The DIDACHE-Gospel”

Appended to the word ‘DIDACHE,’ you will also notice that a more recognizable term ‘Gospel’ follow. This pairing of the two signifies two things about the DIDACHE and the Gospel.

First, that the DIDACHE, as a text, differs somewhat from the Gospel Message which the Lord proclaimed to Israel; although the two overlap a bit, the DIDACHE and canonical Gospel are not quite the same, differing, at the very least, in the fact of having been presented in distinctively different modes and contexts, as vehicles of divine communication. The importance and significance of these differences are one of many topics to be examined.

Secondly, the pairing emphasizes that the True Gospel that the Lord proclaims, to Israel and to Gentiles alike, is a teaching. That is, it is a DIDACHE Gospel, specifically.

Though this is obvious, in fact this second point has unfortunately tended to be overlooked and forgotten (at least under my observation). The apparent reason for this is that, shortly after the DIDACHE Gospel of the Lord was promulgated, it was followed upon by a contrary pseudo-gospel about Him, rather than the correct teaching by Him. This occurred perhaps in fulfillment of a prophetic parable from the Lord Himself: Mat. 13.25.

Here, I do not presume to judge the secondary gospel, the one attributed to Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, which he claims the Lord gave in a vision. Paul’s gospel teaches and presents certain theological interpretations, especially regarding the meaning of Lord’s death and ascension. It does not harmonize with the DIDACHE Gospel. God in His wisdom has allowed both to coexist. But only one Gospel was, according to non-Pauline texts, conferred by the Lord to the Twelve.

~

Now, from this DIDACHE Gospel as a table centerpiece, all kinds of momentous ramification emerge.

First: a would-be disciple of the Lord should explore the DIDACHE’s history; examine its claims of authenticity; and scrutinize its content in detail. If you are such a one, I would dare say that hardly anything, intellectually, would be more important. The implications of the DIDACHE turn out to be more than first appears. Consider, for instance:
(a) that Paul’s gospel somehow overtook the DIDACHE Gospel;
(b) Scriptures became central to the Church despite the fact that the Lord Himself left no writings; and He did not order or authorize the creation of a new canon. On the contrary, He and His authentic apostles went quite the other way, and the latter only belatedly and reluctantly began writing and only of necessity, in response to serious polemical challenges.

Ultimately, no canon came to exist until centuries after the early days. And when the canon was formed, a primary and decisive feature and purpose of it was to reject the DIDACHE !

Now, one begins to appreciate the momentous stakes.

And there is much much more besides. This is why a dozen weblogs and websites are commencing construction as of today, June 1, 2008, In time, if the Lord desires and allows it, there will be extensive textual resources, opportunities for interaction and networking on these subjects. If you are interested, please subscribe to the newsfeed services, and bookmark and visit often.

May the Lord open our eyes and our spirits to His whole saving Truth. Amen.

Here are the weblogs in progress today:

1. “The DIDACHE Gospel”

The prime mover.

2. “Lawless Paul et al.”

Exploring the interactions and contradictions, and reporting scholarship on ‘Paulianity, and outlining intertextuality with the True DIDACHE Gospel. A third

3. “Meta-Bible.”

Because the formation of a canon raises innumerable questions, and it really amounts to a reinvention of an ersatz pseudo-Christianity hundreds of years after Christ, the question of scripture must be reexamined by those who love the Truth. Texts cannot be taken simply ‘on faith’ or declared infallible by fiat. Texts and subtexts, verse by verse, must be scrutinized and compared to a benchmark standard.

Sub-topics include: the epistemological and conceptual problems of biblical scholarship; and important non-biblical apocrypha, pseudepigraphy; and the outpouring of significant new finds.

4. “One Good Shepherd.”

Next, continuing in the spirit of how to restore and honor the Lord’s wishes, this weblog explores and compares from a DIDACHE Gospel perspective proper vs. improper roles of clergy, denominations, seminaries, and, again, scripture. Thus the question is raised: do we really need anything much beyond the DIDACHE Gospel and the Spirit that God gives us? Gentle, loving reorganization can restore the True faith.

5. “Peaceful Economics”

Still continuing this purpose and second in importance to only the Gospel itself is a portion of the Lord’s DIDACHE Instruction which was intended as the behavioral template not only for the Church but for the world.

I call this teaching, ‘Peaceful Economics.’ It especially concerns the manner of how we behave towards and relate to each other economically. For much of the root misery of earthly life stems from our daily mortal struggle for resources and dominance. A pervasive desire of many, makes them strive for excessive wealth and power. This leads in an inevitable, cyclical fashion, to catastrophe.

God’s ‘True Plan of Salvation’ is not a theological or cosmological abstraction but, rather, involves our actual earthly situation. He calls us to embrace a willingness to sacrifice ourselves to address and correct these fundamental and seemingly hopelessly intractable conditions. The struggle for mere survival and then dominance corrupts nearly every soul. We are then fit only for eternal destruction. This is our existential calamity. It is this soul-destructive endless round of failed incarnation that leads to intractable sin and then to spiritual annihilation.

Solving and ‘saving us’ from this bondage, impossible though it seems, is the essence of the Lord’s True Gospel (DID. 4.8-11 and elsewhere).

6. “Fallen Angels Watch”

At the heart of the above-described calamity of human existence lies the question of evil: Evil personified and evil of a metaphysical character. How and why did it come to be? What sustains it? Why does evil possess a dominating ‘life of its own’?

When the so-called Enlightenment arrived about 200 years ago, among its first tenets was to bracket the question of God, and instill a global faith in naturalistic pseudo-explanations; in the process, a second basic tenet was also added: the rejection of a concept of metaphysical, diabolical evil.

And ever since that momentous turning-point, the floodgates have opened. Evil now rules the world and plunders it at will. And yet, intellectuals are stupefied and supine, before the patent reality of it. All have been massively dupe into shallow naturalistic philosophies. Here, on the basis of voluminous evidence that is now being recovered, we begin the work of reestablishing the Truth about cosmological dualism, of good and evil.

7. “Proof of God and Christ in Visions and NDEs” (See also ProofofChrist.com)

In recent generations, God has counteracted whatever purported insufficiency of evidence of His existence may have been perceived. The testimonials and witness statements here assembled prove God’s reality beyond reasonable doubt.

8. “The God of Truth; Reliable Divine Epistemology”

How can we know what is true? This is the question probed by the philosophical discipline of epistemology.

God provides the only true way to knowledge. But this true Way has also been spurned, and held up to ridicule, misunderstood, misrepresented, corrupted, and brush aside by the follies of modernism. At this section, one can re-learn and rediscover reliable, godly ways of knowing Truth, with perhaps unprecedented conviction.

9. “The Two Ways; the True Cosmologies”

As noted in number 6 above, true cosmology is dualistic. There is good and there is evil. This site focuses on the life-changing discovery to be gained in the “Two Ways” teaching of Christ the Lord; this has now been recovered in the DIDACHE Gospel.

Articles encompass topics such as the origins, nature and destiny of souls. This (and several important interrelated teachings) proves to be the correct and true ‘totalizing narrative.’ It trumps all others. The ‘Two Ways’ cosmology spans moral, spiritual and ‘administrative’ or Final Judgment destiny. It has been known and taught in antiquity; once, in fact, the Two Ways teaching lay at the center of earliest Christianity.

And yet, for some reason, it went missing from history until now. And now it can be reconstructed to our benefit. Quite a remarkable turn.

10. “True vs. False Salvation Narratives”

Multiple soteriologies conflict in religions and denominations. Logically, not all can be right. In fact, it is most logical that only one is right and that the others are not only wrong, but are promulgated by evil. Religious organizations paradoxically are the most culpable if unwitting agents.

11. “Anti-Modernism”

Further extending the cosmological discussion of weblogs 6 and 9, this exposes the foibles of Modernism defined as the broadly pervasive attitude which elevates naturalistic materialist-reductionistic “sciences,” and a programmatic denial of God, spirituality, metaphysics, and moral cosmology, into a pervasive culture. This is now recognized as pernicious and corrosive. Yet, the spirit of modernism continues to dominate education, political thought, commercial ‘consumer’ values and mainstream culture.

12. “Enoch Rocks!”

One of the most profound ancient textual discoveries among an outpouring of them in the past two centuries is the so-called Enochic literature dating from the 1st-3rd centuries B.C. (Second Temple period). This tells the story of a completely unexpected and previously unknown form of Judaism. In all probability this was related to Essenism, and was the home base of the Galileean Nazarenes who brought forth Christianity. The story of the books of Enoch, and how they were once prominent in the early Church but were then apparently rejected and suppressed (not unlike the DIDACHE) is probably the most important current research-topic for serious students of Christian origins.

The Enoch literature, with its obvious Christian overtones like the DIDACHE, re-opens the question of ‘true and false inspired Scripture.’

Lastly, as a convenience for ‘one-stop’ composite access to most of the above, visit “Seven Spirits, Seven Blogs”

And may the Lord enrich you in both the seeking and the finding of His Saving Truth. Amen.

This site is one of a dozen interrelated blogs. Each emphasizes its own theme or category portal. At the center sits the DIDACHE Gospel. The word ‘DIDACHE’ (Greek for ‘teaching’) is short for an ancient Christian text fully titled: ‘The Teaching of the Lord, by the Twelve Apostles, to Gentiles.‘

Long ago, this DIDACHE almost certainly represented no less than the authentic founding charter of the Church. As the title states, it was written by or attributed to “the Twelve.”

After being revered and obeyed in the earliest churches, at a point during the mid-to-late 300s it was intentionally forsaken. This decision coincided with the timeframe of the early councils, a few generations after Roman Emperor Constantine converted to the faith and made Christianity the imperial religion. This time became and epochal turning-point. If the DIDACHE is authentically apostolic, then the apparent implication would that the Councils radically altered the Lord’s original teaching (or ‘DIDACHE’). And, in its stead, they created Roman Catholicism.

For about the next 1,400 years the DIDACHE naturally fell into rapid disuse and was eventually lost entirely, although strong traces and derivative adulterated forms of it flourished.

Then at last as if miraculously the DIDACHE was re-discovered. In 1873, an archbishop (Metropolitan) of the Greek Orthodox Church found one well-preserved, 900-year-old copy of it amidst a collection of apparently Patristic texts, in a library at Constantinople. Several other fragments and copies have turned up elsewhere, mainly in Egypt, since then.

Immediately on its translation into modern languages, the DIDACHE, and its authenticity and many ramifications, have been topics of great scholarly interest. At the time, the general excitement it generated has been compared to that stirred by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll. Now, with the passage of over a century of scholarship and analysis, a great deal of information about the DIDACHE is now accumulated, and, commencing June 2008, highlights of this data will be posted at my Didache Gospel blog.

“The DIDACHE-Gospel”

Appended to the word ‘DIDACHE,’ you will also notice that a more recognizable term ‘Gospel’ follow. This pairing of the two signifies two things about the DIDACHE and the Gospel.

First, that the DIDACHE, as a text, differs somewhat from the Gospel Message which the Lord proclaimed to Israel; although the two overlap a bit, the DIDACHE and canonical Gospel are not quite the same, differing, at the very least, in the fact of having been presented in distinctively different modes and contexts, as vehicles of divine communication. The importance and significance of these differences are one of many topics to be examined.

Secondly, the pairing emphasizes that the True Gospel that the Lord proclaims, to Israel and to Gentiles alike, is a teaching. That is, it is a DIDACHE Gospel, specifically.

Though this is obvious, in fact this second point has unfortunately tended to be overlooked and forgotten (at least under my observation). The apparent reason for this is that, shortly after the DIDACHE Gospel of the Lord was promulgated, it was followed upon by a contrary pseudo-gospel about Him, rather than the correct teaching by Him. This occurred perhaps in fulfillment of a prophetic parable from the Lord Himself: Mat. 13.25.

Here, I do not presume to judge the secondary gospel, the one attributed to Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, which he claims the Lord gave in a vision. Paul’s gospel teaches and presents certain theological interpretations, especially regarding the meaning of Lord’s death and ascension. It does not harmonize with the DIDACHE Gospel. God in His wisdom has allowed both to coexist. But only one Gospel was, according to non-Pauline texts, conferred by the Lord to the Twelve.

~

Now, from this DIDACHE Gospel as a table centerpiece, all kinds of momentous ramification emerge.

First: a would-be disciple of the Lord should explore the DIDACHE’s history; examine its claims of authenticity; and scrutinize its content in detail. If you are such a one, I would dare say that hardly anything, intellectually, would be more important. The implications of the DIDACHE turn out to be more than first appears. Consider, for instance:
(a) that Paul’s gospel somehow overtook the DIDACHE Gospel;
(b) Scriptures became central to the Church despite the fact that the Lord Himself left no writings; and He did not order or authorize the creation of a new canon. On the contrary, He and His authentic apostles went quite the other way, and the latter only belatedly and reluctantly began writing and only of necessity, in response to serious polemical challenges.

Ultimately, no canon came to exist until centuries after the early days. And when the canon was formed, a primary and decisive feature and purpose of it was to reject the DIDACHE !

Now, one begins to appreciate the momentous stakes.

And there is much much more besides. This is why a dozen weblogs and websites are commencing construction as of today, June 1, 2008, In time, if the Lord desires and allows it, there will be extensive textual resources, opportunities for interaction and networking on these subjects. If you are interested, please subscribe to the newsfeed services, and bookmark and visit often.

May the Lord open our eyes and our spirits to His whole saving Truth. Amen.

Here are the weblogs in progress today:

1. “The DIDACHE Gospel”

The prime mover.

2. “Lawless Paul et al.”

Exploring the interactions and contradictions, and reporting scholarship on ‘Paulianity, and outlining intertextuality with the True DIDACHE Gospel. A third

3. “Meta-Bible.”

Because the formation of a canon raises innumerable questions, and it really amounts to a reinvention of an ersatz pseudo-Christianity hundreds of years after Christ, the question of scripture must be reexamined by those who love the Truth. Texts cannot be taken simply ‘on faith’ or declared infallible by fiat. Texts and subtexts, verse by verse, must be scrutinized and compared to a benchmark standard.

Sub-topics include: the epistemological and conceptual problems of biblical scholarship; and important non-biblical apocrypha, pseudepigraphy; and the outpouring of significant new finds.

4. “One Good Shepherd.”

Next, continuing in the spirit of how to restore and honor the Lord’s wishes, this weblog explores and compares from a DIDACHE Gospel perspective proper vs. improper roles of clergy, denominations, seminaries, and, again, scripture. Thus the question is raised: do we really need anything much beyond the DIDACHE Gospel and the Spirit that God gives us? Gentle, loving reorganization can restore the True faith.

5. “Peaceful Economics”

Still continuing this purpose and second in importance to only the Gospel itself is a portion of the Lord’s DIDACHE Instruction which was intended as the behavioral template not only for the Church but for the world.

I call this teaching, ‘Peaceful Economics.’ It especially concerns the manner of how we behave towards and relate to each other economically. For much of the root misery of earthly life stems from our daily mortal struggle for resources and dominance. A pervasive desire of many, makes them strive for excessive wealth and power. This leads in an inevitable, cyclical fashion, to catastrophe.

God’s ‘True Plan of Salvation’ is not a theological or cosmological abstraction but, rather, involves our actual earthly situation. He calls us to embrace a willingness to sacrifice ourselves to address and correct these fundamental and seemingly hopelessly intractable conditions. The struggle for mere survival and then dominance corrupts nearly every soul. We are then fit only for eternal destruction. This is our existential calamity. It is this soul-destructive endless round of failed incarnation that leads to intractable sin and then to spiritual annihilation.

Solving and ‘saving us’ from this bondage, impossible though it seems, is the essence of the Lord’s True Gospel (DID. 4.8-11 and elsewhere).

6. “Fallen Angels Watch”

At the heart of the above-described calamity of human existence lies the question of evil: Evil personified and evil of a metaphysical character. How and why did it come to be? What sustains it? Why does evil possess a dominating ‘life of its own’?

When the so-called Enlightenment arrived about 200 years ago, among its first tenets was to bracket the question of God, and instill a global faith in naturalistic pseudo-explanations; in the process, a second basic tenet was also added: the rejection of a concept of metaphysical, diabolical evil.

And ever since that momentous turning-point, the floodgates have opened. Evil now rules the world and plunders it at will. And yet, intellectuals are stupefied and supine, before the patent reality of it. All have been massively dupe into shallow naturalistic philosophies. Here, on the basis of voluminous evidence that is now being recovered, we begin the work of reestablishing the Truth about cosmological dualism, of good and evil.

7. “Proof of God and Christ in Visions and NDEs” (See also ProofofChrist.com)

In recent generations, God has counteracted whatever purported insufficiency of evidence of His existence may have been perceived. The testimonials and witness statements here assembled prove God’s reality beyond reasonable doubt.

8. “The God of Truth; Reliable Divine Epistemology”

How can we know what is true? This is the question probed by the philosophical discipline of epistemology.

God provides the only true way to knowledge. But this true Way has also been spurned, and held up to ridicule, misunderstood, misrepresented, corrupted, and brush aside by the follies of modernism. At this section, one can re-learn and rediscover reliable, godly ways of knowing Truth, with perhaps unprecedented conviction.

9. “The Two Ways; the True Cosmologies”

As noted in number 6 above, true cosmology is dualistic. There is good and there is evil. This site focuses on the life-changing discovery to be gained in the “Two Ways” teaching of Christ the Lord; this has now been recovered in the DIDACHE Gospel.

Articles encompass topics such as the origins, nature and destiny of souls. This (and several important interrelated teachings) proves to be the correct and true ‘totalizing narrative.’ It trumps all others. The ‘Two Ways’ cosmology spans moral, spiritual and ‘administrative’ or Final Judgment destiny. It has been known and taught in antiquity; once, in fact, the Two Ways teaching lay at the center of earliest Christianity.

And yet, for some reason, it went missing from history until now. And now it can be reconstructed to our benefit. Quite a remarkable turn.

10. “True vs. False Salvation Narratives”

Multiple soteriologies conflict in religions and denominations. Logically, not all can be right. In fact, it is most logical that only one is right and that the others are not only wrong, but are promulgated by evil. Religious organizations paradoxically are the most culpable if unwitting agents.

11. “Anti-Modernism”

Further extending the cosmological discussion of weblogs 6 and 9, this exposes the foibles of Modernism defined as the broadly pervasive attitude which elevates naturalistic materialist-reductionistic “sciences,” and a programmatic denial of God, spirituality, metaphysics, and moral cosmology, into a pervasive culture. This is now recognized as pernicious and corrosive. Yet, the spirit of modernism continues to dominate education, political thought, commercial ‘consumer’ values and mainstream culture.

12. “Seven Spirits, Seven Blogs” (Composite Website)

Combining much into one.

‘Enoch,’ biblically, occurs 12 times. At this website ‘Enoch’ refers to a body of ancient writings about Enoch or attributed to him.

1Enoch is usually called ‘Ethiopic,’ because the text was found in Ethiopia about 200 years ago.

2Enoch is called ‘Slavonic’ after a text found in the library of Bucharest, Romania.

Many copies of 1Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In the early church, 1Enoch was revered as sacred writing, and cited by many early bishops (“Fathers”). It was included on several lists of canonical books. But after Constantine, 1Enoch was excluded from the eventual mainstream canon.

So too were many other texts which could justifiably have been included.
Today, much scholarly interest is flourishing around 1Enoch; it is arguably one of the hottest topics in biblical scholarship. A major international conference is held semiannually in Italy, devoted solely to Enoch; and there is no other such conference for any other apocryphal or non-canonical scripture.

The reason for interest in 1Enoch is that it is quite extraodinary and profound; it represents a ‘lost’ form of Judaism; it is almost certainly the text that was revered by the religious sect that eventually produced Christianity; it bears an uncanny parallel to the Pentateuch (i.e. the first five books of the Old Testament) and yet is quite dramatically different in content and theology.

All of which raises several questions. First, why was 1Enoch so highly prized–and yet excluded from the canon?

How and why did it manage to be preserved in a remote Ethopic Church, and then, ‘miraculously’ as it were, come to be recovered–and then to be confirmed by a trove of copies amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls?
What were the politics in early church centuries that caused the exclusion of not only 1Enoch but whole bodies of important and obviously authentic apostolic texts–while other texts of more dubious theological merit were canonized?

So: did the ‘right’ religion survived antiquity–or a wrong one?

Now, one other thing to note is that 1Enoch, more than any other book, parallels the apocalyptic experience of John the Revelator, and also of Christian mystics and, in sense, of modern-day near-death experiencers who are taken to heaven and shown the judgment of humanity.

And, lastly, 1Enoch, more than any other text, presents a cosmology of earthly rule by fallen angels.

So, again, the intruiging question. Did the true and right theology survive in the bible? Or a false one?

You see, if–as 1Enoch represents it–fallen angels actually do rule the planet, would it not make sense for them to want to supress the one ancient textual witness which reveals this situation to the human souls whom these angels rule?

And if Jesus Christ authentically adhered to the teachings of 1Enoch–which it appears He might have–and if 1Enoch and other allied texts were suppressed so that alternative scriptures could be canonize, we have to wonder if the resulting portrayal of Christ’s teaching in Scripture is wholly authentic; or has it been corrupted from the 3rd century onward?

May God, the God of Truth, guide us into all Truth. Amen.

(Gen 4:18) And Irad was born to Enoch. And Irad fathered Mehujael. And Mehujael fathered Methusael. And Methusael fathered Lamech.

(Gen 5:18) And Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years and fathered Enoch.

(Gen 5:19) And after he fathered Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years. And he fathered sons and daughters.

(Gen 5:21) And Enoch lived sixty-five years and fathered Methuselah.

(Gen 5:22) And Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he fathered Methuselah. And he fathered sons and daughters.

(Gen 5:23) And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.

(Gen 5:24) And Enoch walked with God, and then he was not, for God took him.

(1Ch 1:3) Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech,

(Luk 3:37) son of of Methuselah, son of of Enoch, son of of Jared, son of of Mahalaleel, son of of Cainan,

(Heb 11:5) By faith Enoch was translated so as not to see death, and he was not found, because God had translated him; for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

(Jud 1:14) And Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied to these, saying, Behold, the Lord came with myriads of His saints,